6 Basic Beginner's Tips For Starting Out In 'Fortnite: Battle Royale'

If you recently started playing Fortnite: Battle Royale, you're not alone. Epic's new game has rapidly become one of the most popular titles in the world, clocking in at a massive 45 million players at last count and likely only having grown from there. But it's a unique sort of game, both in the industry at large and even when compared to the PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds, which Fortnite: Battle Royale is closely modeled on. You might be lost when you first drop in, and it may take you a while to get your bearings when you're playing. So here are the basics of how the game works: these aren't high-level tips for people who already know their Tilted Towers from Fatal Fields, but some beginner info meant to ease your entry into an approachable but ultimately very difficult game. So read on:

You're Going to Lose:If you're reading this, I'm going to go ahead and assume that you're not a professional game streamer, and those very top-tier players are the only ones for whom this may not apply. Everyone else, take note: you're probably going to lose. There are 100 players in every match, after all, and the odds are not on your side even if you're a capable gamer who knows how to look down a sniper sight and react quickly. At some point, with practice and luck, you might make your way to the top five, and maybe then to the top two, and maybe you'll eventually sit on the mountaintop as the sole survivor in this game. But don't count on it anytime soon.

This is great news! If you're not going to win, you don't have to stress out about it so much. Just set your goals, try to survive and have fun with it. Maybe you want to see how long you can last, and you'll try to avoid conflict as a result. Maybe you want to cause mischief, and so you'll be pursuing combat wherever it takes you. Maybe you want to take guidance from the daily and weekly challenges. Both are valid options, both will make you better at the game. Focus onshort-termgoals and those long ones might just come into focus.

Fortnite: Battle Royale

Credit: Epic Games

You only have what you can find: There's no loadout in Fortnite: Battle Royale. You don't select a primary and a secondary, and you don't get a chance to prepare for what's to come. Every character drops into the map with the same item: a pickaxe, and nothing more. The pickaxe serves as your melee item and a way to destroy the environment for resources (funny sentence, that), and if you want anything else you'll have to find it in the world. The buildings of Fortnite: Battle Royale are stocked with guns, grenades, traps and consumable potions or bandages, and the early parts of the game are all about getting as many armaments as possible to turn you helpless fighter into someone who stands a fighting chance in this world. Everyone might start with that pickaxe, but by the end of the game everyone you meet will be armed to the teeth.

Spend time listening for the dramatic sound effect that you can hear when there's a treasure chest in the vicinity: usually stuck in slightly hard to reach places, those chests are good places to get a small clutch of useful items.

Storm's a Comin:' The storm is the basic organizing principle of a match in Fortnite: Battle Royale. The storm starts forming a minute after the doors on the battle bus open: once that happens, you'll see a white circle on the map. This will be the safe area once the storm closes in, but you have a good amount of time to get there. Check the timer right below the mini-map in the upper right-hand corner -- that's how long it will be before the storm begins to close in. Once that happens the timer will start again, only this time it will be counting down to the amount of time it takes for the storm to complete it's slow-moving shrink to the white circle. Once that happens, the cycle starts again with a smaller circle.

The Storm damages you constantly while you're inside of it, so you'll have to reach the white circle every time it closes in or be left outside to die. This is how the game forces the ever-shrinking number of players into contact with each other: by the end, the circles will be so small that the remaining players will be basically on top of each other. So while you will, eventually, need to be inside the circle, don't freak out too much about it: the time is generous, and careful positioning will keep you alive more consistently than trying to get into the middle of the circle. Even if you get caught in the Storm, it only damages you one point of health per minute, so you still have some leeway for getting out.

Fortnite: Battle Royale

Credit: Epic Games

Collect Resources And Build: Building is the signature mechanic of both Fortnite: Battle Royale and its PvE progenitor, Fortnite: Save the World. That pickaxe you start with can be used to whack anything and everything in the environment, from trees to walls to cars, all of which will drop either wood, brick or stone when you do so. Those materials can be used to build: you can see the little menu right above your inventory in the lower right. Once you hit the button to start building you can select between a floor, a wall, a staircase or a roof. If you want to get fancy, you can also edit walls to put doors and windows into them, but you'll have a better time if you get comfortable with the basics first.

Building is used to create safe structures and sniper nests, to reach high-up places, or even to put up quick shields in the heat of battle. If you watch good players, you'll see them erect even complex structures in mere moments, and a recent update makes that even easier. This is your goal: get comfortable switching between combat and build modes, and get comfortable building basic structures as quickly as possible.

People Are Dangerous: Every game has what's called a Time-to-kill: it's the average amount of time it will take for a player to fall down once fired upon. Games with a short TTK encourage reflexes and positioning, because any given fight could be over with one or two well-placed shots. Fortnite's TTK is very short. That means that every single enemy you see in the game should be treated as a massive threat: they could kill you the second they become aware of you.

That means you want to be very, very careful about how you open up an engagement. If you see another player and decide to fight, make sure you've got an appropriate weapon for the distance, make sure you've got an idea of where they might run to, and make sure you've either got some nearby cover or the confidence in being able to finish the fight before you're going to need it. The large map size means this isn't the manic chaos of Call of Duty deathmatch: every fight is a challenge, and you should treat every kill you manage to score as a major victory.

Fortnite: Battle Royale

Credit: Epic Games.

Solo, Duo, and Squad: This one is self-explanatory, but it's something you might miss if you're just booting the thing up. The are three standard game modes to choose from, with occasional limited time events popping up as well. The modes are Solo, Duo, and Squad. Solo drops you in alone, Duo drops you in with one partner, and Squad drops you in with a team of four. You can do this with friends if you want, but if you're playing alone the game will matchmake you with someone.

You change modes on the lobby screen, though the input will be different depending on your platform.

Note that everyone in a game will be playing with the same setup, so you'll never be in a situation where you'll be up against a squad as a solo player, unless of course, your squad is already dead. That does mean, however, that team modes are going to be much more difficult for matchmade teams that might not have the coordination of friends showing up together. A skilled player is dangerous on their own, but four skilled players in concert are much more than four times as dangerous.